


Doomsday Was Okay

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Zombies, F/M, Mentions of SolAra, Zombies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-18
Updated: 2013-01-17
Packaged: 2017-11-25 21:58:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/643381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The zombie apocalypse, for Sollux, really wasn't anything to get hyped up about. He travels alone, likes being alone, and is doing pretty "okay" (as his girlfriend would've put it). So why should Feferi change his routine at all?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doomsday Was Okay

##  one 

It seemed like the apocalypse hadn’t really been as surprising as Sollux Captor anticipated. The screams of his neighbors in the floors both above and below him had woken him, and he jolted out of bed at four fifteen in the morning, awake within seconds. Groans from the undead became audible from behind the thin walls, and that in itself was a surprise; of all the ways that humanity could have chosen to end, it would be by the hands of zombies. How cliché was his only thought as he packed his bag and slid out onto the fire escape.

Escaping Manhattan was a bitch, unmistakably because the population was 1.5 million and about a fourth of that were dead within five days. Sollux mostly moved by rooftop, and it was challenging, being as gangly and thin as he was. Food wouldn’t run short for a while, but lacking any body fat to spare, he moved quickly and as stealthily as he could manage. He made it a rule while traveling to loot every other building he came across that looked safe, although only the top floor. On the sixth day of his journey exiting New York, he was clear enough from the city to descend from the abandoned buildings and begin on ground.

Sollux was doing reasonably well for his first end of the world experience (well, minus the online RPGs). The dead had been relatively avoidable if he didn’t count a small number he’d encountered wandering the halls of the skyscrapers he ransacked. Sometimes he wondered how his girlfriend was faring throughout all of this. She’d always loved to LARP with those lame ass online friends of hers (it wasn’t like he could call them much other than that; they were his friends, too), and she was fairly good at it. But now that the destruction of civilization was in motion, would she still be considered his girlfriend, or his ex-girlfriend? She was alive the last time they spoke, but that was before all of this. Guessed for now it would be some bizarre Schrodinger name, like Schrodinger’s girlfriend or something.

By the tenth day from the time when he left his apartment – he carved a notch into his ratty tennis shoes every day – Sollux wasn’t positive of his location. The night before, he’d camped out in a car on the end of the George Washington Bridge that had slashed tires. He’d only slept for a couple of hours and was moving after a bite to eat. He stayed to the highways, feet weary and aching, when his ears picked up a guttural, lengthy groan, followed by several more of varying frequencies. They grew closer to him, and before he knew it, he broke into a run.

After that, the Gemini had a bit more of a tricky time remembering to mark his shoes every day. He’d crossed the borders quite a few times, not that it mattered any longer; borders hadn’t been used to define states for a while now. He caught glimpses of the living every now and then, but only from afar – they would be ascending a building or rummaging through the remains of those fortunate enough to have not been turned. They wouldn’t interact at all, no, that ran the risk of a robbery, and those had been running high for some time.

For his first apocalypse, Sollux was doing, as his Schrodinger girlfriend would have said, “okay”.

\- -

But for those first several months, Sollux slowly and slowly became less okay. It wasn’t that he was lonely or anything, far from it – he had always enjoyed the serenity that came with being alone. He was always famished or exhausted or hurting, but that was the problem – he was always moving. Currently, he suspected he was somewhere in New Jersey, which would be refreshing if he had a destination in mind. Several days before, he’d managed to get his grimy hands on a map of the state. The brunette found it sticking out of the glove box of an abandoned Chevrolet that balanced itself on the edge of the highway. He’d start with the water for a breather, and then go on from there.

Somewhere within his third month (he’d stopped cutting his shoes after he almost tripped and got bitten) of walking, running, and outsmarting the dead, he found himself wandering in a suburb of the city of Long Branch. Sollux was about twenty minutes from the Atlantic, and if he peeked through one of the mountains of cars that had piled up in an intersection, he could see the waves crashing onto the sandy shore. He’d almost lightened up a bit before he spotted a walker shuffling towards him, its jaw hanging limply from a meaty string of muscle on its face. Its eyes were dead, and with most of its clothing having been ripped off and the chest decomposed, he couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman – well, not that it mattered anymore.

They were disgusting, but Sollux’s feelings towards the walkers mattered just as much as anybody else’s. He stood in the intersection for a moment, as if he hadn’t encountered a living corpse before, as more emerged from beneath fallen cars and storefronts. Christ, his legs were weak and quaking, but getting devoured alive was never really on his daily list of things to do. He took off to the east while his opponents staggered sideways after him.

\- -

A little over a mile away, there is a young woman who inhales a breath of cool, crisp air as she emerged from the ocean with a net full of fish clasped in her hand. Her name is Feferi Peixes, and she had been living like this for three months. With her free hand, she gently tugged her solid pink goggles down to her neck and approached a tattered, dull beach chair that is planted in the sand. Feferi picked up the plaid salmon shirt she laid there about an hour previously and slipped it around her damp shoulders. Absentmindedly, she rubbed at a hazel eye as she began to trudge halfheartedly towards the dirty golf cart that awaited her. She slung the school of still flailing sea dwellers onto the back of the cart and kicked the side with her bare foot to start it, solemnly driving back up to the boardwalk.

Somewhere from in town, a deafening yell emitted. The Pisces looked up, almost feeling hopeful, but sighed instead and parked the golf cart so she could trudge up the boardwalk steps. Her tank top clung to her body, completely soaked through to her skin. Calmly, she walked over to the RV where she had been keeping camp for roughly a month or so and dumped the net of fish onto the ground, next to her makeshift fire pit and a tattered lawn chair. She stepped inside to dry her hair for twenty so minutes, but when she returned a figure stood, facing towards the ocean. Her wet towel hit the ground as she withdrew a long breath, and he spun around.

There was an air of silence around them before he murmured in a low, soothing voice, “Don’t kill me.”

“Oh God,” was the foremost thing that came from her lips. “Oh…Oh, Jesus, are you human? I mean…alive?”

He stood, motionless, fingers nervously playing at the frayed hem of his blue t-shirt. For a second, not a sound was uttered between them. For her, though, the steady rise and fall of his chest was an answer. Feferi raced to him and without thinking, wound her arms around his waist and nearly picked him up, simultaneously squeezing the wind out of him. In her grasp, he squirmed and writhed uncomfortably until she let go, realizing what she’d done. “Oh, sorry, s-sorry, I…I just haven’t seen anything living for a long time.” She rubbed her eyes, looking at the asphalt. “You aren’t bitten, are you?”

“No,” was his only reply. “But they’re back there.”

Feferi sighed through her nose in silence, disappearing into her home and returning with a large shotgun wielded in her hands. “Stay here, then. I’ll be back in a minute.” Without another sound, she slipped around the edge of the RV and vanished.

\- -

Sollux stood solemnly to regain his breath while the mystery woman was departed. He shrugged off his thin, worn leather jacket (really, it’d gotten too hot for him a while ago) and leaned against the side of the trailer. He had no plans to stay but for a couple of minutes – perhaps to get some food and water, if he was lucky – but she didn’t return for several hours. When she did, however, there were tiny spatters of blood along the bottom of her nearly dry tank top. Her reddish-brown hair was mostly dry, as well, but was ruffled and tangled, as if she’d been running. With a bit of a grim smile, she dropped the empty shotgun onto the lawn chair.

“Sorry,” she muttered, “there was a hoard of them and I had to find some wood to burn them…wasn’t gonna let them get all the way over here.” With one swift motion, she swooped her hair out of her freckled face and took in a breath. “Anyway, it’s getting late, which means it’s getting dark. If you’re gonna get going, you probably should go soon; the walkers are the most active during the night.” She leaned down and grabbed the towel that had fallen there hours before, wrapping it around her shoulders again. “It’d be safer to hijack an old car to sleep in for the night, or even come in here with me, if you want.” With that comment, she headed back inside.

It was late, and it had long grown to a muggy, humid atmosphere, as if it was going to rain. Whoever she was, she was right; traveling this late into the day would just tire him out more, and maybe the next time, he wouldn’t be as lucky to come across someone like her again. Really, he was putting all of his faith and trust into a girl whose name he didn’t even know, but had saved him from that pack of dead that were on his tail. He huffed quietly, grabbed his jacket, stepped up onto the creaky, dirty stair leading into the RV, and opened the door.

\- -

Much to Feferi’s contentment, the boy stayed for more than the night. He seemed very uncertain of her, and when she offered for him to sleep on the fold-out bed, he declined and made a spot for himself on the floor. She slept soundly in the back bedroom, only clad in her tank-top and boy shorts. All of a sudden, in her rest, she felt a body crash against the side of the RV. Feferi didn’t stir much; she tried to ignore it, until it happened again, and again, and again. With a groan, she pulled the blinds down for a split second only to see a hoard of dead roaming and pressing up against her makeshift home. She snapped the blinds down and instantly sprung out of bed.

Without a sound, she made her way into the hallway, where the nameless man dozed away. There was a handgun at her side with an itchy finger near the trigger. She kneeled in front of him and hissed, “Hey. Hey, get up.” When he didn’t budge, she groaned quietly and prodded at his shoulder, hissing a bit louder, “Get up. We’re surrounded.”

His eyes blinked open slowly, and at the word “surrounded”, he sat up and took hold of the pistol. His hazel eyes glanced up at her as he stood and echoed, “…Surrounded?”

“Yeah.” Feferi jumped up and grabbed the escape hatch on the roof, pulling the ladder down so they could climb up. “There are about 30 of them. You ever killed one before?”

“No,” was his one worded retort.

“Alright. Cock the gun,” she said as she began to give him instructions, cocking it as she spoke, “look down the barrel, inhale and exhale slowly and calmly, and pull the trigger.” She brought her foot up onto the bottom rung of the ladder, adding, “And aim for the head. It’ll save time and ammo.” Just as he prepared to climb behind her, she stopped, and added unnecessarily, “One last thing; I don’t have any pants longer than this right now, so don’t stare at my ass.” A grin was in order to finish the statement, but time was running short, so she hustled herself onto the roof.

He followed and they stood back to back, his breath significantly heavier than hers. “I have this end,” she muttered, to which he replied, “Then I have the other.”

They started to take down as many as they could, both aiming cautiously and with as much precision they could muster. After a moment, Feferi grumbled, “Shit, they just keep coming.”

“Fuck, do you have a bat or something? I can’t do this,” and within seconds of that he angrily chucked the empty gun at a head, cracking its fragile skull and causing it to tumble to the earth. He turned to ask something – Feferi could tell because she was constantly glancing over her shoulder to check on him – but before any words came out, a pale, grimy hand grabbed his bare ankle and dragged him to the ground.

\- -

Sollux tried not to yell, but a yell escaped his mouth without permission. It wasn’t a yell of fear, not at all; it was mostly a yell of anger and frustration because he’d been stupid enough to throw a perfectly functioning weapon. Jesus, she probably didn’t even have a bat or anything, and now he was sure as shit dead.

Somewhere over the roar of the dead lunging at him and kicking them all away the best he could, he heard her swearing on the top of the roof. Several fell down around him, dead (well, permanently dead) as she shot from the top of the RV.

But then, she landed, directly in front of him, and she heard a muted whimper as she did as if she didn’t want him to hear it. They fought together – they fought rather pathetically, but it was together. While Sollux kicked at the easily breakable feet and legs of the walkers, she shot at them, and after running out of bullets, she kicked and punched until the last one had been beaten down with the butt of her gun.

She breathed out and began shaking, and then looked around her shoulder at him, who had also begun shaking. Their eyes locked, hazel on hazel, and he stood unevenly, standing over her by just several inches. She, with her eyes still on him, broke the deathly silence. “What’s your name?”

He spoke quietly, almost under his breath, “Sollux Captor…yours?”

“Feferi Peixes,” she answered elegantly. A light grin played on her lips, regardless of the obvious pain in her leg. He couldn’t help but return it with the same spirit that she had.

**Author's Note:**

> For my matesprit Samantha because it's her birthday and she loves SolFef and zombies. Happy birthday Sam! <3
> 
> Thanks a lot to Zoe for rping this with me and majorly assisting me in terms of realism and plot. It means a bunch!


End file.
